Not Invented Here

Institutional resistance to practical solutions

By Christopher Snowdon, Zion Lights, and Kristian Niemietz

• Single-issue campaigners claim to want to tackle big issues – including obesity, climate change, and smoking - but often reject real solutions on ideological grounds.

• Anti-obesity campaigners claim that obesity costs the UK £98bn a year, yet many dismiss weight-loss drugs proven to reduce body weight by 15-20% - clinging instead to failed draconian bans and taxes.

• Nuclear energy is the most reliable way to cut carbon emissions, yet environmental activists oppose it - backing expensive renewables instead.

• Pragmatic solutions to smoking, excessive drinking, high food prices, and housing shortages also exist but face institutional opposition from many activists.

• Policymakers should seek evidence-based solutions to problems, instead of capitulating to ideological interest groups.

A new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs argues that ideological bias is preventing policymakers from embracing real solutions to major societal challenges, from obesity and climate change to smoking and housing.

The report, Not Invented Here: Institutional Resistance to Practical Solutions, explores how market-driven innovations – including weight-loss drugs and nuclear energy - are routinely dismissed or obstructed by governments and campaigners, not because they don’t work, but because they don’t align with preferred interventionist policies.

For example, many public health campaigners remain reluctant to embrace weight-loss drugs that have been proven to help patients lose 15-20% of their body weight. Instead, they continue to push for sugar taxes, advertising bans on ‘junk food’, and restrictive food policies, despite these interventions continuously failing to curb rising obesity rates.

While nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest, and most land-efficient way to generate electricity, most environmental groups oppose it, instead backing land-intensive renewables that require vast amounts of resources instead. This opposition has led to higher energy costs and stalled progress on carbon reduction in countries that have shut down their nuclear capacity.

Smoking is estimated to kill 80,000 people each year in the UK alone. Low-risk alternatives to combustible tobacco have substantially reduced smoking rates in countries that have embraced them. Sweden, for example, has become the first ‘smoke-free’ country in the world due to the popular use of snus.

Despite this, snus is banned in all EU countries except Sweden, and the World Health Organisation encourages members to ban vapes. The opposition to low-risk products makes it more difficult for smokers to quit, contributing toward smoking related deaths.

Meanwhile, the UK faces a housing crisis driven by supply shortages, yet some campaigners claim that Britain already has enough homes, arguing instead for rent controls and restrictions on landlords - despite overwhelming economic evidence that such policies worsen affordability and limit supply.

The authors argue that policymakers should focus on evidence-based solutions rather than impractical, ideologically driven ‘solutions’. Instead of relying on ineffective regulations, taxes, and bans, governments should remove barriers to innovation and allow market-driven approaches to address major societal challenges.

Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“Some activists genuinely want to find the best way to solve problems but, as this research shows, many of them really want to dismantle capitalism, destroy various industries and reshape the world in their image. Environmental campaigners who oppose nuclear power, like public health activists who oppose safer nicotine products and alcohol-free beer, have outed themselves as ideological zealots who don’t really want a solution.”

Zion Lights, Science Communicator and Environmental Activist, said:

“You would think that climate activists who are worried about carbon emissions and want to phase out fossil fuels would be in favour of building fleets of civilisation-powering, low-carbon nuclear power plants. But you would be wrong. It does not fit their ideology. Achieving real solutions to climate change stands in the way of their real goal, which is degrowth.”